Sexual orientation biases attentional control: a possible gaydar mechanism
Lorenza S. Colzato 1*, Linda van Hooidonk 1, Wery P M . van den Wildenberg 2, Fieke Harinck 3 and Bernhard Hommel 1
1Cognitive Psychology Unit & Leiden Institute for Brain and Cognition, Leiden University, Netherlands
2Amsterdam Center for the Study of Adaptive Control in Brain and Behaviour (Acacia) Psychology Department Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands
3Social Psychology Unit, Leiden University, Netherlands
Homosexuals are believed to have a “sixth sense” for recognizing each other, an ability referred to as gaydar. We considered that being a homosexual might rely on systematic practice of processing relatively specific, local perceptual features, which might lead to a corresponding chronic bias of attentional control. This was tested by comparing male and female homosexuals and heterosexuals--brought up in the same country and culture and matched in terms of race, intelligence, sex, mood, age, personality, religious background, educational style, and socio-economic situation--in their efficiency to process global and local features of hierarchically-constructed visual stimuli. Both homosexuals and heterosexuals showed better performance on global features—the standard global precedence effect. However, this effect was significantly reduced in homosexuals, suggesting a relative preference for detail. Findings are taken to demonstrate chronic, generalized biases in attentional control parameters that reflect the selective reward provided by the respective sexual orientation.
Introduction
Individuals with a homosexual orientation are often believed to have a “telepathic sixth sense” (Reuter, 2002) for recognizing each other, an ability that is often referred to as gaydar (Shelp, 2002) – a portmanteau of gay and radar. Even though perceivable differences between homosexuals and heterosexuals may not be salient to everyone, some studies revealed subtle but distinctive features that homosexuals tend to share, such as coiffure (Rule et al., 2008), body-movement and gesturing style (Ambady et al., 1999), speech patterns (Linville, 1998), and penile size (Bogaert and Hershberger, 1999). Hence, there is a rich perceptual basis for people to develop a reliable gaydar, and homosexuals are apparently better trained in making use of it.
In the present study, we were not so much interested in the particular perceptual cues that underlie gaydar but we asked whether being a homosexual is associated with systematic changes in attentional control. Most perceptual cues that gaydar needs to consider are relatively specific and local and, thus, require focused attention to reliably pick them up. There is increasing evidence that practicing particular attentional sets can induce chronic attentional biases that generalize to other, practice-unrelated situations.
For instance, individuals growing up in an Asian culture tend to attend to visual scenes and displays more holistically than Westerners do (Nisbett and Masuda, 2003; Nisbett and Miyamoto, 2005). Among other things, this is suggested by their performance on hierarchical stimuli, such as larger letters that are made of smaller letters. People are commonly faster in responding to the global than to the local letter or symbol, an observation that has been coined the global precedence effect (Navon, 1977). This is true for members of Asian and Western cultures alike, but the global precedence effect is more pronounced in Asians than in North Americans – suggesting a relative preference for detail in the latter. This finding has been attributed to cultural learning: while Westerners are raised to develop a relatively independent view about themselves, Easterners have stronger emphasis on social interdependence (Markus and Kitayama, 1991). Acquiring a more independent or more interdependent self-concept might require or suggest attentional sets that are emphasizing more local or more global symbols features, respectively, and thus establish a chronic bias of attentional control processes (Hommel and Colzato, in press).
Recent observations on the impact of religious practice on visual attention provide convergent evidence for this possibility. Colzato et al. (2008) showed that Dutch Calvinists and Dutch atheists, matched for culture, race, sex, age, and intelligence, process global and local visual features differently. A major characteristic of neo-Calvinism is the sphere sovereignty principle which, in a nutshell, implies that believers should not judge other groups in society but “mind their own business”. This would lead one to expect that Calvinists show a stronger preference for detail and, indeed, the global precedence effect was less pronounced in Calvinists than it was in atheists. A recent study revealed that the global precedence effect is more pronounced in Italian Roman Catholics than in Italian seculars, and in Israeli Orthodox Jews than in Israeli nonbelievers (Colzato et al., 2010 under revision), which fits with the strong emphasis on social solidarity and interdependence in both Catholicism and Orthodox Judaism.
Taken together, these findings imply that the way social/cultural groups shape the behavior of their members, presumably by providing selective reward for norm-fitting, appropriate behavior, poses specific demands on attentional control processes (Colzato et al., 2010, under revision; Hommel and Colzato, in press). These specific demands favor some attentional sets over others and thereby induce apparently chronic biases. This does not necessarily imply that individuals would lose their ability to implement other sets, but doing so requires more cognitive effort and, thus, impairs performance. If so, the more pronounced practice in homosexuals to attend to local visual features may lead to a generalized and chronic attentional bias towards local as compared to global features. If this would be the case, homosexuals should show a less pronounced global precedence effect than heterosexuals in the global–local task (Navon, 1977). We tested this hypothesis in male and female individuals with homo- and heterosexual orientation.
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